Education and Hard Cash

Just reading Charles Hopkins and Rosalyn McKeown Education for Sustainable Development and the link between education and cash.

"Nations with high illiteracy rates and unskilled work forces have fewer
development options. These nations are largely forced to buy energy and
manufactured goods on the international market with hard currency. To acquire hard
currency, these countries need to trade, and usually this means exploiting natural
resources or converting lands from self-sufficient family-based farming to cash-crop agriculture."

Even in so called developed nations, it could be argued that we educate for cash. I lectured in a Commerce degree class with about 300 students and asked how many students would be using their business degree for a not for profit organisation: Two students raised their hands.

Sustainability @OP

Just a few thoughts about sustainability @ OP.

After reading what the Schools and departments are up to a few points became apparent.

1. Schools have different, often complementary, views on their sustainable practice. some schools (eg Art and Design) have quite comprehensive profiles while others (eg SAB, CLC) have less. However all statements on profiles appear to fit the core business

2. No Service centres (eg EDC) have made comments on their sustainable practice.

3. The last posting on the 'news' section was 2008 and this year only one post on the OP Sustainable Practice blog.

While we have leaders in the field of sustainable education and practice, it appears as though we are becoming complacent and the work that went into our much celebrated ITPNZ Award of 2008 may not be 'sustainable'

Or am I being cynical?!?!